FATAL: could not access private key file “/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key”: Permission denied

Question

I believe I ended up mixing up permissions at /etc/ssl directories tree as the last modification was made on 18th November and a day after I could not get my PostgreSQL to work.

Answer 1

I am running the postgres server in WSL, and I was facing the error with the ssl-cert file. I managed to make it work by changing the owner of the file to the postgres user I had created, adding the expected user and group IDs to the user as required of the application (111 and 116, respectively, as gleaned from helpful error messages), and voila, I have an active server from within WSL.

sudo useradd postgres
sudo usermod -u 111 -g 116 -a -G ssl-cert postgres
sudo chown postgres /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

After running the above, there were two more files the user running the server (postgres for me) needed permission to access, both residing in /var/postgresql. I used sudo chown -- twice more to give ownership to postgres. Running sudo service postgresql start will tell you which files you'll need to transfer ownership of through any error messages.